Collective Leadership Institute

01/06/2026

The longterm impact of leadership programmes is often hardly visible. We are glad to see that Young Peacebuilder 2024 alumnus Joseph Obore's organisation ADEGCO proves: empowering individuals can lead to collective action. And overcoming conflicts can lead to economic and social prosperity. Learn more about how his team kicked off their new Social Enterprise and Innovation Programme in Uganda.

28/05/2026

Any ideas on how to measure peacebuilding work?

CLI’s Finnish partner RKI - The Peace Education Institute invited project manager Guillem Vallbona to Helsinki. International peace educators came together on a 2-day-workshop discussing numerous practical ways to approach peacebuilding education. In times of militarisation, polarization, and systemic crises, this call from RKI to the spring-like Finnish capital came at the right time.

“We build peace through enabling a multiplicity of inner peaces moving us towards collective peace” one of the participants explained. Another one added: “To ensure inner peace, it´s important to have the capabilities to recalibrate oneself regardless of the contextual challenges”. Guillem shared insights on CLI’s relational approach to peace education – based on living systems theory.

The level of discussions around the topic of peace and how to approach it was extraordinarily fruitful. New ideas were flowing, tough topics discussed, and diverse perspectives were listened to. What were concrete outcomes? Well, that is an open question. While peacebuilding work is all about facilitating and enabling people to come together, how do we measure that?

We send big kiitos to RKI for organising this workshop. RKI, CLI, and Resilience.Earth also agreed on continuing their exploration of combining their approaches for holistic peacebuilding education. We are curious, however, about your thoughts on measuring peacebuilding work. Any ideas?

26/05/2026

Please join CLI's Theresa Kuschka, at the Berlin Summer Dialogues tomorrow!

Find all the details of this important session on Women, Peace, and Security in Practice on the website!

This Berlin Summer Dialogue is a direct continuation of 2025's Berlin Summer Dialogue: Inclusive Peace: Resisting the Backlash, Strengthening Participation.

26/05/2026

26/05/2026

We are so delighted to see it, so honoured to be a part of it, and so excited to share it with the world!

14/05/2026

“For many young people from my context, peace is not something we naturally believe in. We cannot reflect on it and think it’s possible… but it really matters to us.”

In the Eastern DRC, people live with conflict on a daily basis. Where conflict is active and violent, people look to their governments to grant peace. But for Helene Mikanda, the experience of cultivating peace through Nonviolent Communication taught her that community transformation is made through individual transformation. Personal peace is at the center of peacebuilding, it is an individual responsibility, and an individual need.

In her session at the 2026 Transformation Literacy Conference she shared what she has learned through conversation and connection with other conflict affected people: that “behind anger there is pain and fear,” that it takes courage to remain human in the face of pain. And it is possible to build a more peaceful community even in the most difficult conflicts, if people have the courage to choose to be human over and over again, every single day.

Learn more about nonviolent communication:
https://avp.international/ and https://www.cnvc.org/

12/05/2026

How do we trade sadness, loss, and powerlessness for a future of peacebuilding? What is the pathway to peace, and what tools do we have?

These were the questions offered to Zainab Zahid in conversations at the 2026 Transformation Literacy Conference, to which she dropped 4 serious gems:

💎 Start where you are. Gather people around you to make a difference.
💎 Peace isn't just a lack of conflict or discomfort, sometimes, it even requires it!
💎 Peace is not about who has power, its about how people connect, trust, and coexist.
💎 Peace is deeply built from both inside AND outside the system.

What else do you know about peacebuilding? Drop a wisdom gem in the comments!

11/05/2026

How do you deal with entrenched negative beliefs?
What challenges do women active in peacebuilding face?
What are Finnish feminists learning from Tunisian feminists?
Can countries recycle plastic across borders?
Can a conflict-zone heal interpersonal trauma to build regional peace?

Are you interested in how Collective Leadership works in practice?
Do you want to learn how we can move from conflict to collaboration?

All this in our April edition of the CLI Newsletter! http://hosted-p0.vresp.com/1789555/6bcf101f01/ARCHIVE

11/05/2026

“How can they have a smile on their face despite all they have gone through?”

Dr. Amr Abdalla, Professor Emeritus at University for Peace - UN Mandated, took us to 1990s Burundi in his session at the 2026 Transformation Literacy Conference. There, with the Women Rebuilding Homes and Peace project, he shared how artistic intuition was a critical skill for the community peacebuilding process as displaced women and children rebuilt their houses--with their own hands-- alongside former counter-parties.

It is always women and children who suffer the most in conflict, always women and children who bare the brunt of forced displacement. And it is women and children who pick up the pieces to start over.

“The rebuilding of homes and the smile on children’s faces touched me the most,” said Dr. Amr.

Happiness, ease, safety, comfort, play, these are all the tangible outcomes of peacebuilding.

07/05/2026

“I was born in a conflict zone in what is now South Sudan. I was born on the run during clan attacks; hence my name, Pech. It means “raid” in English.”

Pech Gewaar Dak knows displacement in a way much of our audience here couldn’t imagine. When he was born, the southern part of Sudan was not only destabilized by the war of independence but also by clan clashes.

“We grew up knowing no stability until we gained independence, when we said peace at last. But we were wrong. Our country fell into a devastating civil war in 2013. Just two years later, a nationwide flood struck and swept away communities’ land, including my own.”

His community was forced to leave their fertile land and move to high, sandy areas that don’t support crop agriculture.

“My community is now poor, not because of war, but because of climate change.”

This experience shaped the next phase of Gewaars' life, building a Climate Action movement for transformation from his new home in a refugee camp in Zimbabwe. Through the Refugee Coalition for Climate Action, he and the young refugees of his community plant trees, rehabilitate land, teach the community about climate stewardship, and grow food.

Gewaar’s work has literally transformed some of the landscape around him, with each tree planted “providing not only shade for me…but for everyone who sits under this tree!”

Thank you for sharing your story with us Gewaar at the 2026 Transformation Literacy Conference!